23rd February 2018, Friday (Day 5)

Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP)

By: Mariane Soriano, Reymond Roi B. De Roa
Bless C. Galanga, John Emmanuel T. Veneranda

The last itinerary on our educational tour is to visit the Nuclear Power Plant in Morong, Bataan.
Since the coordinator informed us that Bataan is a long way to travel from Manila, we need to
leave in the hotel as early as possible. The last day of our educational tour started with our alarm
clock blaring at 4 o’clock in the morning. We got up, prepared ourselves, gathered at the bus and
leave at the hotel by 6 am. We ate our breakfast at the bus since we don’t have enough time to do
that in the hotel.

After a long wait,

sitting, sleeping at
the bus, we finally
reached our final
destination. It took 4
hours of waiting to
reach Bataan
Nuclear Power
Plant.

We were warmly
welcomed by the
people who worked
at the BNPP when
we arrived. As we
were heading first at
their office, you can
see the plant from afar and we found ourselves staring, overwhelmed and amazed of what we are
witnessing. Before giving us a tour at the plant, they gave us first some brief orientation,
discussions and some history about Nuclear Power Plant.
The presenter tackled first about some other renewable energy that can generate sufficient amount
and produce more electric energy. He mentioned a hydropower, solar energy, wind energy,
biomass, geothermal energy and a biofuels. In hydropower, he exampled a Dam which it is
commonly used to generate electricity. He gave all renewable energy an example like solar panels
for solar energy, wind turbines or windmills for wind energy, geothermal power plant for
geothermal energy and diesel power plant and coal fired power plant for biofuels. He also explains
their process on how to produce electric energy.
After brief
explanations, he
now discussed the
Nuclear Power
Plant. The Nuclear
produces energy
from splitting the
atoms of uranium.
Uranium serves as
the fuel of the power
plant which is used
to boil the water to
make steam which
drives the turbine
generators to
produce electricity.
Nuclear Power Plant is a sustainable energy which can run and operate 24/7. Many countries are
using NPP like South Korea, Japan, France, Switzerland, Italy and so many more, and they are
relying for about 10 to 30 per cent source of
electrical energy.
In Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, it has 389
hectares of land and the plants constructed
for about 18 meters above sea level which
is safe for tsunamis. He said, it took 11
years to site the perfect spot to build the
BNPP. He also discussed some brief
history about this power plant. On February
1976, the contract was signed and it is
decided to build the first ever Nuclear
Power Plant in the Philippines on July
1977. But on 1979, Ferdinand Marcos
ordered to suspend the construction of the
plant for the safety purposes and the
evaluation of safety concerns.
On 1981, the construction was resumed and
integrate safety features like safe from
tsunamis and earthquakes. The
construction was completed and the
systems and was ready for operate on 1984.
But in 1986, the Philippine government decided to control and hold to not to operate the power
plant because of the timing of EDSA Revolution. So, on 1986 up to present, they are still on the
maintenance of the Power Plant and never been operated at least once.

After giving us some enough information that we need, we gathered and headed of to the plant.
When you observe the physical features of the plant from the outside, you can really see the oldness
of it. The rustiness of the gates, the moss on the buildings and the defeaning silence of the
surroundings.

When we entered at
the gate of the plant,
the tour guide
explains that
workers before
cannot pass through
the gate if they don’t
have an ATM card
that serves as their
gate pass. He shows
us the security
machine they are
using before, there is
an ATM card swiper
and a finger print
scanner on it. So, in
that case they cannot enter at the plant if they are not an authorized person. After entering the gate,
you can now see the plant upclose. Because of the wideness of the area, we walked for about 5
minutes before we can really enter inside the plant or the ground floor.
As we entered, we were amazed of the physical features inside. The equipments are perfectly
installed, the wires are arranged, the design, and the systems are still look new. The tour guide told
us that they didn’t touched anything or rearranged the apparatuses even once. The features and
structures that we are seeing are still the same features way back year 1986. They are only focusing
on the working maintenance of the plant. The ground floor is the turbine building area where you
can see the pipes, pumps motor, the wirings, etc. In there, he discussed the cycle process of the
water that composed of first,second and third loop that passes through the pipes and turbines of
the plant to produce electricity.
After a long
discussion, we headed
to the second floor of
the building where you
can see the nuclear
side of the plant.
Before entering on that
area, there is a room on
the side where every
personell before
should go through
there for their anti
radiation uniforms.
There was also some
health physicist that
helps them
decontaminate if they are active in radiation. After that, we headed to an electrical room nuclear
side where you can see bus bars and multiple breakers with 480 volts. There are two sets of
electrical rooms in the nuclear side which are identical for the reason of they need a backup incase
of troubles and prevent the power plant to shut down. When we climbed up to the next floor, we
saw the outside wall of the reactor side where there is a gap between buildings. The gap was
designed to prevent it from destruction incase of sudden earthquakes. We also saw some conduit
pipings that are perfectly installed on the walls.

We climbed up again
to the next floor
where we saw the
reactor side of the
plant. We saw
various parts of the
reactor, one of them
are the reactor head
or control rod
mechanism where
purposely lift up
control rods. The
reactor parts was
submerged by the
water with chemicals
that helps to absorb
the radiation of the reactor. When in terms of changing the fuel uranium,the power plant should
be shut down and the health physicists will check the amount of radiation produced by the reactor.
On the other parts, we also saw two steam generators, controls, etc.

After we toured to the reactor side, we now headed down to the other building where we saw the
control room of the plant. In there, we saw multiple controls, a 10kb capacity USB, and an old
fashioned telephones that was used to contact president Marcos before to be constantly updated.
The control room is the last part we toured at the plant.